Miklos Nyiszli

Birthday: 17 June 1901, Szilágysomlyó, Austria-Hungary [now Simleu Silvaniei, Romania]

Miklós Nyiszli was born on 17 June 1901 in Szilágysomlyó (Simleu Silvaniei) in Transylvania, at the time in the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied medicine, first in Cluj in 1920, then in Kiel between 1921 and 1924. In 1926 he enrolled at the medical faculty of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau, completing his degree in 1929. In Germany, Nyiszli specialised in forensic pathology; his doctoral dissertation dealt with indications of causes of death in suicides. He studied and worked under the supervision of Karl Reuter, the director of the Breslau Institute of Forensic Medicine, and Georg Strassmann, pathologist and professor of forensic medicine at the University of Breslau. In 1930, Nyiszli returned to Transylvania and began practicing in the town of Oradea. He soon established himself as a forensic pathologist, often assisting the police and the courts in identifying unusual or disputed causes of death. In 1937, he moved with his wife and daughter to Maramures in northern Transylvania, to the small town of Viseul de Sus, where he opened a private practice. Following the Vienna Award of August 1940, Northern Transylvania was returned to Hungary. In 1942, Nyiszli was sent to the work camp in the village of Desze (Desesti), also in Maramures, from where in May 1944 he and his family were deported to Germany. First he worked on the construction site of the artificial rubber factory being built by IG Farben in nearby Monowitz (Auschwitz III); in June 1944 the Nyiszli family was transferred to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. In Auschwitz he was tattooed with his camp number: A 8450. His studies at a prestigious German university with respected specialists impressed SS medical officer Dr. Josef Mengele, who was looking for an assistant. He became a Jewish inmate doctor and forensic pathologist who worked particularly for Mengele in the crematorium II in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He remained there until January 1945. After Auschwitz, came Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee in Upper Austria. In July 1945, upon his return to Transylvania, he offered his deposition before the Budapest Commission for the Welfare of Deported Hungarian Jews. Nyiszli's wife and daughter survived as well. The family settled again in Oradea, now Romania, where Nyiszli opened a private practice in 1946. Nyiszli finished writing his memoirs, which he published in 1946, in a serialised form in the Hungarian newspaper "Világ" ("The World"), and in March 1946 as a book under the title "Dr Mengele boncolóorvosa voltam az Auschwitz-i [sic] krematóriumban" ("I was Dr Mengele's autopsy doctor at the Auschwitz crematorium"). Nyiszli's memoirs were at that time the first publication on the unknown subject of the 'Sonderkommandos' and it became an important document for historical research on Auschwitz, still highly recommended today by expert Dr. Gideon Greif. As an important witness Nyiszli travelled to the Nuremberg Trials and offered on 8 September 1947 his deposition to one of the interrogators in the Medical Trials, Benvenuto von Halle. By 1948, he could no longer practice as a private doctor. His daughter Susanna married in 1952 and had a daughter, Monica. Miklós Nyiszli died of a heart attack on 5 May 1956 in Oradea, Romania. Show less «

The bodies were not lying here and there throughout the room, but piled in a mass to the ceiling. Th...Show more »

The bodies were not lying here and there throughout the room, but piled in a mass to the ceiling. The reason for this was that the gas first inundated the lower layers of air and rose slowly towards the ceiling. This forced the victims to trample one another in a frantic effort to escape the gas. Yet a few feet higher up the gas reached them. What a struggle for life there must have been! Nevertheless it was merely a matter of two or three minutes' respite. If they had been able to think about what they were doing, they would have realized they were trampling their own children, their wives, their relatives. But they couldn't think. Their gestures were no more than the reflexes of the instinct of self-preservation. I noticed that the bodies of the women, the children, and the aged were at the bottom of the pile; at the top, the strongest. Their bodies, which were covered with scratches and bruises from the struggle against each other, were often interlaced. Blood oozed from their noses and mouths; their faces, bloated and blue, were so deformed as to be almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless some of the Sonderkommando often did recognize their kin. The encounter was not easy, and I dreaded it myself. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

I felt it my duty to my people and to the entire world to be able to give an accurate account of wha...Show more »

I felt it my duty to my people and to the entire world to be able to give an accurate account of what I had seen if ever, by some miraculous whim of fate, I should escape. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

I took it all in, paralysed with fright. As soon as I had come through the main gate I had realised ...Show more »

I took it all in, paralysed with fright. As soon as I had come through the main gate I had realised that I was on death's path. A slow death, opening its maddening depths before me. I felt I was lost. Now I understood why I had been given civilian clothes. This was the uniform of the Sonderkommando - the kommando of the living-dead. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

Dr. Mengele ordered all doctors to step forward; he then approached the new group, composed of some ...Show more »

Dr. Mengele ordered all doctors to step forward; he then approached the new group, composed of some fifty doctors, and asked those who had studied in a German university, who had a thorough knowledge of pathology and practiced forensic medicine, to step forward. "Be very careful," he added. "You must be equal to the task; for if you're not..." and his menacing gesture left little to the imagination. I glanced at my companions. Perhaps they were intimated. What did it matter! My mind was already made up. I broke ranks and presented myself. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

Dr. Mengele wanted to solve the problem of the multiplication of the race by studying human material...Show more »

Dr. Mengele wanted to solve the problem of the multiplication of the race by studying human material, especially twins that he was free to experiment on as he saw fit. Dr. Wolff was searching for causes of dysentery. Actually, its causes are not difficult to determine; even the layman knows them. Dysentery is caused by applying the following formula: take any individual - man, woman, or innocent child - snatch him away from his home, stack him with a hundred others in a sealed box car, in which a bucket of water has first been thoughtfully placed, then pack them off, after they have spent six preliminary weeks in a ghetto, to Auschwitz. There, pile them by the thousands into barracks unfit to serve as stables. For food, give them a ration of moldy bread made from wild chestnuts, a sort of margarine of which the basic ingredient is lignite, thirty grams of sausage made from the flesh of mangy horses, the whole not to exceed 700 calories. To wash this ration down, a half liter of soup made from nettles and weeds, containing nothing fatty, no flour or salt. In four weeks, dysentery will invariably appear. Then, three or four weeks later, the patient will be 'cured', for he will die in spite of any belated treatment he may receive from the camp doctors. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

...the years I had spent in pre-war Germany furnished plenty of material for discussion. They were m...Show more »

...the years I had spent in pre-war Germany furnished plenty of material for discussion. They were much impressed by the fact that I spoke their own language better; or at least in a more cultured manner, than they did. I soon realised that there were certain expressions they did not understand, although they carefully refrained from letting me know it. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

Dr. Mengele arrived after a few hours and put us through another oral examination lasting about one ...Show more »

Dr. Mengele arrived after a few hours and put us through another oral examination lasting about one hour. He then gave us our first assignment: it involved the medical examination of selected individuals with some form of abnormal development. We took measurements of these people, then Oberscharführer Mussfeld shot them in the head with a "Kleinkaliber", i.e., a 6-mm gun, after which we were ordered to perform an autopsy and prepare a detailed report. Subsequently, we applied chloride of lime to the abnormally developed corpses and sent the thoroughly cleaned and packed bones to the Anthropological Institute in Berlin-Dahlem. These experiments were repeated sporadically, until one day at midnight SS officers woke us and led us to the dissecting room, where Dr. Mengele was already waiting for us. In the workroom next to the autopsy room there were 14 Gypsy twins under SS guard, sobbing bitterly. Without saying a word, Dr. Mengele prepared a 10-cm3 and a 5-cm3 syringe. From a box he took out evipan, from another he placed chloroform in 20-cm3 vials on a table. Then the first twin was brought in, a young girl of around 14. Dr. Mengele ordered me to undress her and place her on the autopsy table. Then he administered an intravenous injection of evipan in the right arm. After the child lost consciousness, he touched for the left heart ventricle and injected 10 cm3 of chloroform. The child was dead after a single convulsion and Dr. Mengele had her taken to the morgue. The murder of all 14 twins happened in the same way that night. Dr. Mengele asked us if we could perform 7-8 autopsies. To this we replied that to do precise scientific work, we could dissect an average four corpses a day. He accepted that. We received subjects for our scientific autopsies either from the camp or recently arrived transports. [Deposition of Dr. Nyiszli, July 28, 1945 at Budapest, State Committee for the Welfare for Deported Hungarian Jews] Show less «

Three months in the same camp and in the same milieu had created, in spite of everything, a certain ...Show more »

Three months in the same camp and in the same milieu had created, in spite of everything, a certain intimacy between us, Besides, the Germans generally appreciate capable people, and, as long they need them, respect them to a certain extent, even in the KZ. Such was the case for cobblers, tailors, joiners, and locksmiths. From our numerous contacts, I had been able to ascertain that Mussfeld had a high esteem for the medical expert's professional qualities. He knew that my superior was Dr. Mengele, the KZ's most dreaded figure, who, goaded by racial pride, took himself to be one of the most important representatives of German medical science. He considered the dispatch of hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers as a patriotic duty. The work carried out in the dissecting room was for the futherance of German medical science. As Dr. Mengele's pathological expert, I also had a hand in this progress, and therein lay the explination for a certain form of respect that Mussfeld paid me. He often came to see me in the dissecting room, and we conversed on politics, the military situation and various other subjects. It appeared that his respect also arose from the fact that he considered the dissection of bodies and his bloody job of killing to be allied activities. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

The work moved ahead double-time. The gas chambers had to be cleared, for the arrival of a new convo...Show more »

The work moved ahead double-time. The gas chambers had to be cleared, for the arrival of a new convoy had been announced. The chief of the gas chamber kommando almost tore the hinges off the door to my room as he arrived out of breath, his eyes wide with fear or suprise. "Doctor," he said, "come quickly. We just found a girl alive at the bottom of a pile of corpses." I grabbed my intrument case, which was always ready, and dashed to the gas chamber. Against the wall, near the entrance to the immense room, half covered with other bodies, I saw a girl in the throes of a death rattle, her body seized with convulsions. The gas kommando men around me were in a state of panic. Nothing like this had ever happened in the course of their horrible career. We moved the still-living body from the corpses pressing against it. I gathered the tiny adolescent body into my arms and carried it back to the room adjoining the gas chamber, where normally the gas kommando men change clothes for work. I laid the body on a bench. A frail young girl, almost a child, she could have been no more than fifteen. I took out my syringe and, taking her arm - she had not yet recovered consciousness and was breathing with difficulty - I administered three intravenous injections. My companions covered her body which was as cold as ice with a heavy overcoat. One ran to the kitchen to fetch some tea and warm broth. Everybody wanted to help as if she were his own child. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

I can say the following about the gassing of prisoners with Cyclon B in the underground gas chambers...Show more »

I can say the following about the gassing of prisoners with Cyclon B in the underground gas chambers of Birkenau: On the basis of my personal observations - I often had to remove medicines and eyeglasses from the disrobing room near the gas chamber, after going through the handbags of those who had been gassed - I know that the doors were closed and that the lights were turned out centrally when the mass of people were in the gas chamber. At this moment a black painted Red Cross vehicle arrived. An SS officer and a Security Service official climbed out of the car. They held four green enameled tins in their hands. They went to the low concrete chimneys, which were covered with concrete lids, and they put gas masks on. The tins were opened, and the contents of the tins - Cyclon B in kernel form of a pink-lilac color - were thrown into the opening. The kernels did not spread out in the gas chamber since they fell downward through perforated tubes and immediately gave off the gas through contact with the air. [Sworn statement of Dr. Nyiszli, October 8, 1947 at Nuremberg Trial] Show less «

In the months of May, June and July an average of 3-4 Hungarian transports arrived at the Auschwitz ...Show more »

In the months of May, June and July an average of 3-4 Hungarian transports arrived at the Auschwitz Judenrampe. The selections were performed in shifts by Dr. Mengele and Dr. Thilo. Ability to work was the sole selection criteria and at times it was quite invasive. As part of the selection process, newly arrived transports were divided into two groups - one to the right, the other to the left. The right side meant life, the left side the crematorium. In terms of percentage, 78-80% was sent to the left: children, mothers with young children, the elderly, pregnant women, the handicapped and disabled servicemen. In a few minutes, the crowd on the left started to move slowly to the left, carrying their personal belongings. The crematoria were around 200 meters from the Judenrampe, and the crowd of approximately 2000 people passed under the gate to crematoria 1, 2, 3 or 4 as ordered. At the crematorium, they descended 10-12 concrete steps and entered an empty, underground room with a capacity of 2000. The first row stopped instinctively at the entrance, but once they read the signs "Disinfection" and "Bath" printed in all major languages, they were reassured and descended the steps. They were immediately ordered to undress; there were benches and numbered clothes hooks along the walls of the room. As part of a careful misinformation strategy, the SS reminded everyone to memorize their number to make sure they would find their clothes after the bath without problem. The crowd would have been reassured, although the fact that men, women and children were made to undress in front of each other caused many to take fright. After about ten minutes the crowd of 2000 was herded more roughly into the next concrete room with a capacity of around 2000 without any furnishing or even a window. This was the gas chamber. [Deposition of Dr. Nyiszli, July 28, 1945 at Budapest, State Committee for the Welfare for Deported Hungarian Jews] Show less «

Among malefactors and criminals, the most dangerous type is the "criminal doctor", especially when h...Show more »

Among malefactors and criminals, the most dangerous type is the "criminal doctor", especially when he is armed with powers such as those granted to Dr. Mengele. He sent millions to death merely because, according to a racial theory, they were inferior beings and therefore detrimental to mankind. This same criminal doctor spent long hours beside me, either at his microscope, his disinfecting ovens and his test tubes or, standing with equal patience near the dissecting table, his smock befouled with blood, his bloody hands examining and experimenting like one possessed. The immediate objective was the increased reproduction of the German race. The final objective was the production of pure Germans in numbers sufficient to replace the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, all of whom were condemned to be destroyed, but who for the moment were living on those territories declared vital to the Third Reich. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

I began the dissection of one set of twins and recorded each phase of my work. I removed the brain p...Show more »

I began the dissection of one set of twins and recorded each phase of my work. I removed the brain pan. Together with the cerebellum I extracted the brain and examined them. Then followed the opening of the thorax and the removal of the sternum. Next I separated the tongue by means of an incision made beneath the chin. With the tongue came the oesophagus, with the respiratory tracts came both lungs. I washed the organs in order to examine them more thoroughly. The tiniest spot or the slightest difference in colour could furnish valuable information. I made a transverse incision across the pericardium and removed the fluid. Next I took out the heart and washed it. I turned it over and over in my hand to examine it. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

Like the ethnological studies, like the notions of a Master Race, Dr. Mengele's research into the or...Show more »

Like the ethnological studies, like the notions of a Master Race, Dr. Mengele's research into the origins of dual births was nothing more than a pseudo-science. Just as false was the theory concerning the degeneracy of the dwarfs and cripples sent to the butchers, in order to demonstrate the inferiority of the Jewish race. ["Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account", 1946] Show less «

Miklos Nyiszli

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